Quotes about Oppression

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.

Violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.

Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality--all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life.

Een mens die een ander mens van zijn vrijheid berooft, is een gevangene van de haat, opgesloten achter de tralies van vooroordelen en kleingeestigheid.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.

What freedom am I being offered when my very South African citizenship is not respected?

Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

While some say a total shutdown of religions and personal freedoms could never occur in the United States, just remember, the Russian Tzars never realized the impact of the Communist revolution until they were removed. The German people were deceived into thinking Hitler would be a positive leader. In our nation, oppressive and freedom-killing legislation would be the method used to chain targeted groups to the pillar of silence and irrelevance.

If our prayers for others mean anything at all, they cannot be cloistered away all the time in sanitised environments. Standing in the gap for the oppressed may well mean that it matters where we pray and how we pray, and that our prayers for the poor are worked out very practically.